IDAHO FALLS, Idaho — Seventeen Idaho National Laboratory workers were undergoing full-body scans after they were potentially exposed to low-level plutonium radiation Tuesday while cleaning at the nuclear research site, officials said.

There was no evidence that radiation was released outside the facility, and there was no risk to the public or the environment, the laboratory said in a statement. The workers underwent initial decontamination procedures at their worksite and were taken to the laboratory’s medical center for evaluation.

Investigators were at the site trying to determine what went wrong.

The laboratory has designed and constructed 52 reactors since its founding in 1949. There’s still active research at the facility, but hundreds of workers are also cleaning up radioactive waste that’s left over from more than 60 years of activities, including at the Zero Power Physics Reactor.

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The Atomic Age is an ongoing project that aims to cultivate critical and reflective intervention regarding nuclear power and weapons. We provide daily news updates on the issues of nuclear energy and weapons, primarily though not exclusively in English and Japanese via RSS, Twitter, and Facebook. If you would like to receive updates in English only, subscribe to this RSS.

Additional Notes / 謝辞

The artwork in the header, titled "JAPAN:Nuclear Power Plant," is copyright artist Tomiyama Taeko.

The photograph in the sidebar, of a nuclear power plant in Byron, Illinois, is copyright photographer Joseph Pobereskin (http://pobereskin.com/)

This website was designed by the Center for East Asian Studies, the University of Chicago, and is administered by Masaki Matsumoto, Graduate Student in the Masters of Arts Program for the Social Sciences, the University of Chicago.

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